Archive for the Category » martial law «

Our economy cannot help but collapse at some point under the weight of a national debt over $12 trillion, or almost $40,000 for every man, woman, and child. This number continues to increase at an average of $3.81 billion per day, and someday the Chinese will either quit investing in a losing proposition – or they’ll own it outright.

Al Quaeda has won the war on terror. You won’t see that headline on the nightly news, but you can read an excellent article on the subject by Fred Reed. Granted, the man is more than a little crude, but he’s honest in pointing out that the goal of a terrorist is to terrorize. On that point alone, they have won hands down. [HT to Jim.]

So little is necessary to terrorize the world’s hyperpower. A free-lance dingaling secretes a bomb of sorts in his shoe, whereupon the US goes into convulsions and long lines of Americans stand comically barefoot in airports. Dingaling Two popularizes liquid explosives, and so Washington frenziedly confiscates toothpaste. Yes, the world’s hyperpower is afraid of Colgate, with fluoride. Dinglaling Three hides the infernal machine in his skivvies, so Obama makes Firm Pronouncements, and we will now have to undergo examination by panty scanners. Always, over and over, the terrorists have the iniative. The country reacts hugely and predictably.

We routinely kill and maim innocent men, women, and children all over the world, and can’t even be bothered to keep a tally, because as General Tommy Franks said, “We don’t do body counts.”

We have murdered over 50 million innocent, unborn babies in this country calling it choice, when in actuality it’s a result of the demand for freedom from the consequences of our personal actions.

The Bill of Rights is swiss cheese. We willingly submit to arbitrary searches at airports, train stations, and driving anywhere within 100 miles of an external border – which includes more than 2/3 of the population; we have politically-correct hate laws to prevent Christians from speaking the truth of scripture; our every electronic transmission from private phone calls to internet searches are arbitrarily monitored and sold to the government; we need “permits” to gather in protest of the latest government outrage; habeus corpus and the Posse Comitatus Act have become quaint historical traditions; and the list goes on.

Government officials at every level have run amok. They ram every imaginable law down the throats of an unwilling populace; they defend bribery, blackmail, and coercion as normal political practice; and their personal, financial, and sexual “scandals” have become commonplace.

So how did this happen? Why is America dying?

We can blame the public school system that is hell-bent on indoctrinating our children with feel-good, anything-goes secular humanism, but neglects the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the historical significance of these documents.

We can blame big business, who courts corrupt politicians to pass laws to give them an unfair advantage over the competition.

Or we can blame the power-hungry politicians, who care not about the people they are elected to represent, but only about their own positions.

Or … we can look a little deeper and recognize that the above are just symptoms of a much deeper problem, one that we have been warned about from the beginning:

… there is no truth more thoroughly established than that there exists in the economy and course of nature an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness; between duty and advantage; between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity; since we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained; George Washington, his first inaugural address, 1789

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion . . . Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. John Adams, speech to the military, 1798

Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the greatness and the genius of America . . . America is good. And if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835, 1840

Above all, I know there is a Supreme Being who rules the affairs of men and whose goodness and mercy have always followed the American people, and I know He will not turn from us now if we humbly and reverently seek His powerful aid. Grover Cleveland, Second Inaugural Address, 1893

We do not need more national development, we need more spiritual development. We do not need more intellectual power, we need more spiritual power. We do not need more knowledge, we need more character. We do not need more law, we need more religion. We do not need more of the things that are seen, we need more of the things that are unseen. Calvin Coolidge, President 1923-1929

The basis of those ideals and principles is a commitment to freedom and personal liberty that, itself, is grounded in the much deeper realization that freedom prospers only where the blessings of God are avidly sought and humbly accepted. Ronald Reagan, speech 1983

This sampling of wisdom is based, of course, on the Bible – that same Bible that is largely rejected or ignored in today’s America. The latest evidence of this fact, and the one that prompted this post, comes from a recent Rasmussen poll. These answers cannot come from Christians who put their faith in God.

National Survey of 1,000 Likely Voters
Conducted December 30, 2009

By Rasmussen Reports

1*Some people say that there is a natural tension between protecting individual rights and national security. In the United States today, does our legal system worry too much about protecting individual rights, too much about protecting national security, or is the balance about right?

43% Legal system worries too much about protecting individual rights
17% Legal system worries too much about protecting national security
28% Balance is about right
12% Not sure

2* In light of the recent attempt to blow up an airliner as it was landing in Detroit, should the United States take full control of security measures at foreign airports so that anyone flying to the U.S. would have to go through U.S. security?

54% Yes
29% No
16% Not sure

3* Should the attempt to blow up the airliner be investigated by military authorities as a terrorist act or by civilian authorities as a criminal act?

71% By the military as a terrorist act
22% By civilian authorities as a criminal act
7% Not sure

4* Should waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques be used to gain information from the suspected bomber?

58% Yes
30% No
12% Not sure

5* How do you rate the U.S. government’s response to the attempted airline bombing – excellent, good, fair or poor?

Whether you agree or disagree with the majority, understand that these attitudes do not reflect Christianity. They do not reflect the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. And ultimately, God will give us what we ask for.

If you will fear the LORD and serve Him, and listen to His voice and not rebel against the command of the LORD, then both you and also the king who reigns over you will follow the LORD your God. If you will not listen to the voice of the LORD, but rebel against the command of the LORD, then the hand of the LORD will be against you, as it was against your fathers. (1 Samuel 12:14-15)

This post is part of the Favorite Founders’ Quote Friday meme. Go to Meet the Founding Fathers to see who else has participated.

[Note: Last week, I was unable to continue my FFQF examination of the Declaration of Independence. I'm detouring this week, also, but hope to get back to it next week.]

I’m actually excited by this opportunity …Never waste a good crisis.

So said Hillary Clinton on March 6th to the European Parliament in Brussels, in reference to the economic meltdown. She was quoting “her old friend,” Rahm Emanuel, who was part of her husband’s White House, and is now Obama’s chief of staff. In truth, she was speaking for power-hungry tyrants throughout history.

With every war, with every famine or depression, with every natural disaster, those in power have taken more power, portions of which are retained when the crisis has past. In recent American history, this process has accelerated.

Military Abuse of Power

When the Twin Towers fell on 9/11, Bush used the opportunity to invade a sovereign nation that was completely unrelated to the attack. He declared a “war on terror” and claimed the power to invade any country in the world to find terrorists, then kidnap and torture them without any charges being filed, in clear violation of habeus corpus standards. Here at home, he violated most of the Bill of Rights, much of the Constitution, and completely undermined our system of justice, all in the name of “protecting” us.

[I]f the inhabitants of a country have found some great personage who has shown rare foresight in protecting them in an emergency, rare boldness in defending them, rare solicitude in governing them, and if, from that point on, they contract the habit of obeying him and depending on him to such an extent that they grant him certain prerogatives, I fear that such a procedure is not prudent, inasmuch as they remove him from a position in which he was doing good and advance him to a dignity in which he may do evil. [p.41]

Then, in clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, which was intended to severely limit the ability of the federal government to use the military for law enforcement, last fall Bush assigned the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team“as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters” who may also “help with civil unrest and crowd control.”

More recently, the Army dispatched troops to the streets of Samson, Alabama in response to a killing spree by a former cop. While an investigation is supposedly underway to determine if this violated any laws, rest assured that this will become the norm in America.

Military personnel are trained and equipped to wage war against an enemy. Police are trained to maintain order and keep the peace among their neighbors. The two roles don’t interchange very well — as has been amply demonstrated by the carnage resulting in recent years from increased police use of military tactics.

In 1961, Dwight D. Eisenhower spoke to this issue shortly before he retired from public service:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.

We have quite obviously ignored his warning.The Economic Meltdown

When the economy started visibly crumbling, Bush bullied Congress into bailing out Wall Street to the tune of $700 billion, even threatening them with martial law. Obama has expanded this power shift with his “stimulus” package of $787 billion.

Make no mistake: this rape of American pocketbooks, which will create a deficit of almost $10 trillion, will also create unprecedented inflation. As South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford has stated, “the United States faces a Zimbabwe-style economic collapse if it keeps ‘spending a bunch of money we don’t have.’” In case you haven’t kept up, two rolls of toilet paper in Zimbabwe will cost you $10 million.

Add to that Obama’s plans for national service and wealth re-distribution, and all of our labor will go to support the state … and the bankers who run it.

When Andrew Jackson revoked the charter of the Second Bank of the U.S. in 1836, which served as a type for the Federal Reserve, he had this to say:

Gentlemen, I have had men watching you for a long time and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter, I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves.

While I applaud Ron Paul and his efforts to control the Federal Reserve, (tell your rep to support HR 1207!) in my heart I believe it’s too little, too late. As Hillary so generously pointed out, these government power grabs are not accidental. They are the result of deliberate, long-term plans to acquire power – which leads (finally) to my quote for this week’s FFQF. That the fault for all of this lies with the American people is for another post.

That thus we have hastened through the reigns which preceded his majesty’s during which the violations of our rights were less alarming, because repeated at more distant intervals than that rapid and bold succession of injuries which is likely to distinguish the present from all other periods of American story. Scarcely have our minds been able to emerge from the astonishment into which one stroke of parliamentary thunder had involved us, before another more heavy, and more alarming, is fallen on us. Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day; but a series of oppressions begun at a distinguished period, and pursued, unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate and systematical plan of reducing us to slavery.

The Works of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 2 (Correspondence 1771-1779, Summary View, Declaration of Independence) > A SUMMARY VIEW OF THE RIGHTS OF BRITISH AMERICA. SET FORTH IN SOME RESOLUTIONS > paragraph 141

Once again, the government is trying to illegally intimidate citizens with a display of military force:

According to a December 10, 2008 press release from the Highway Patrol, USMC Military Police participated in a joint task force with the County sheriff and state police to conduct a sobriety checkpoint on December 12, 2008. All in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act that prohibits the military from participating in civilian law enforcement operations under most circumstances.

If we submit to this abuse without a wimper, then we’re gonna see jackboots every time we turn around … and we’ll have only ourselves to blame.

The Bovine has posted a statement issued by a legal group representing the Stowers family. The short version is that Ohio officials went beyond the scope of their administrative jobs by invading this farm and holding the mother and her children at gunpoint for several hours. The complaint also states that their Fourth Amendment rights were violated. Here’s an account of the raid:

On Monday, December 1, a SWAT team with semi-automatic rifles entered the private home of the Stowers family in LaGrange, Ohio, herded the family onto the couches in the living room, and kept guns trained on parents, children, infants and toddlers, from approximately 11 AM to 8 PM. The team was aggressive and belligerent. The children were quite traumatized. At some point, the “bad cop” SWAT team was relieved by another team, a “good cop” team that tried to befriend the family. The Stowers family has run a very large, well-known food cooperative called Manna Storehouse on the western side of the greater Cleveland area for many years.

There were agents from the Department of Agriculture present, one of them identified as Bill Lesho. The search warrant is reportedly suspicious-looking. Agents began rifling through all of the family’s possessions, a task that lasted hours and resulted in a complete upheaval of every private area in the home. Many items were taken that were not listed on the search warrant. The family was not permitted a phone call, and they were not told what crime they were being charged with. They were not read their rights. Over ten thousand dollars worth of food was taken, including the family’s personal stock of food for the coming year. All of their computers, and all of their cell phones were taken, as well as phone and contact records. The food cooperative was virtually shut down. There was no rational explanation, nor justification, for this extreme violation of Constitutional rights.

So begins another story of self-important bureaucrats joining forces with over-zealous cops who wanna play soldier with real guns. This story nauseates me. It makes me furious. And I fear that it’s just another taste of things to come.

[note: As of this post time, which is FIVE DAYS after the raid, I couldn't find ONE media outlet that considers this story newsworthy. However, it shows up on 310 different blogs. You might want to consider changing your news sources.]